Manly Apron

I'm not sure why my husband has to make these crazy faces when I take his picture . . . but I finally finished the manly apron I started for him about 5 months ago. The shark side has a divided pocket. He can also turn it around and sport tropical fish. Now he can stop wearing my lavender gingham one with the yellow flowered ruffles. I started using a pattern for this, a Butterick Easy, but the instructions were really confusing, so I ended up winging it and it turned out great anyway. Hopefully, he will make really good use of it and go back to cooking on the weekend out of the Everyday Food cook book he got for his birthday.

Star Wars Goodie Bags

They have these cute chunky looking figures now for ages 4+ that are practically unchokable in all sorts of characters (Transformers, Marvel Comics, Indiana Jones and Star Wars). They come in packs of two for about $7. I bought 5 packs of them and tied one character to each goodie bag. I made from them out of squares of cellophane (red cellophane if the character was from the dark side, green cellophane if they used the force for good). I couldn't find anything else Star Wars related that I could afford so instead I filled them each with a noisemaker, a punch balloon, 2 giant lemon heads (cherry heads, etc.,), two fruit flavored tootsie rolls (I saved all the vanilla flavored ones for myself), a push pop, 3 solid milk chocolate balls from See's, two citrus melts from See's, and a mini pack of Dots (the birthday boy's favorite candy).

I took five boys home from the party including one of my sons. That was when the candy trading started:

"I've got a lemon head I'll trade for an orange head, who'll give me a orange head?"

"I'll give 2 chocolate balls and a citrus melt for a push pop."

"Two tootsie rolls, here who'll give me a pack of Dots for two tootsie rolls?"

 . . . that went on for awhile until my son figured out that by blowing up his punch balloon to the size of a water melon and then sticking the noisemaker on the end, he could make what sounded like the loudest, most annoying scream ever. It was fortunate that I was in such a good mood because all the boys decided to copy him and then tried to scream louder than the noisemaker/balloon combination. The car ride was about 45 minutes long, but my son was having a great time and really that was the end result we were going for that day.

Star Wars Cupcakes or the Force was with me

These were a little complicated to create, but totally worth it for my kids' reactions as well as the kids at the party. If I had had time I think I would have tried to make several characters including Princess Leia (Cinnabon cereal for her hair buns), Jabba the Hut and Chewbaca, but we had just got back from a trip to Europe a couple days before I had to make them so I settled for one good and one evil character. I found that the less detail I put on them, the better they looked.

Yoda:

To make his ears I used Famous wafers which I heated for 15 seconds in the microwave and then cut with an angel shaped cutter and then removed the excess. I cut slits in frozen donut holes and then tucked the cookie ears in. The heads were then attached with frosting to the cupcakes which had already been dipped and swirled in white frosting. I stuck them in the freezer to harden while I made noses and eyes. The eyes were created with tiny white gum balls and cola flavored tootsie roll frooties (I don't know why they are green). I also made noses from pea size bits of same tootsie rolls by making a crescent shape and rolling the ends under, then making creases between the nostrils and bulb of nose. When the Yoda heads were frozen enough, I dipped them in warm green frosting and slopped frosting all over with a spatula and let the excess drip off. When the frosting had hardened enough, but not too hard I stuck the eyeballs and nose on, then added pupils and white dots for shine. I also added a smile which my kids told me was wrong. Smile Yoda does not. Then I added brown to the front for his shirt he wears under his white robe and stuck an old fashioned lemon-lime flavored candy stick in for his light saber.

Darth Vader:

For Darth I used stacked mini cupcakes upside down on top of a regular cupcake and then topped those with 3/4 of a donut hole. I had to trim the mini cupcakes at an angle to get them to look more like the helmet. Then I used a grape starburstish candy for the part of the mask he breathes through. I should have used a regular tootsie roll to match the flavor of the cupcakes. The whole thing was frosted together and frozen. I added black food coloring to a can of dark chocolate frosting and dipped and swirled all my Darths. When the frosting was sufficiently hardened I put Crows (licorice flavored gum drops that had been cut horizontally in half) on for the eyes and silver dragees for helmet details. I then frosted a line along the side and front to give the helmet shape a little depth. All my Darths had old fashioned raspberry candy sticks for light sabers.

Giant Cakes Feed 100

I spent the last week cooking up at a church camp for teenage girls. These two cakes are made with 3 cake mixes and three cans of frosting each, star shaped marshmallows, m'n'ms and skittles. The chocolate one seems kind of Care Bears-ish while the white cake reminds me of a pastel colored confederate flag. I scored the cakes into pieces so that I could decorate each square evenly and I think they turned out pretty cute for the limited amount of supplies I had on hand.

Bend and Snap, I mean dip and swirl

The best way to do the dip and swirl method is to freeze your cupcakes beforehand. Heat your canned frosting in the microwave for 10 seconds, if it is still not runny enough, heat it in 5 second increments. It should be runny, but not so hot it is bubbling. Stir with a butter knife or chopstick. Holding the cupcake by its base, dip it in the melted frosting head first and swirl. Let the excess drip off while slowly turning similar to winding a knob. Voila, frosting so smooth you'd think it came out of a factory. These blue and yellow cupcakes I made for scouts were decorated using the dip and swirl method. To really cover the entire top of the yellow ones with sprinkles I dipped the cupcake, already frosted, into the tub of sprinkles. The big star sprinkles are made by Wilton and were purchased at Wal-mart.

Giant Flower Basket Cupcake

Tomorrow is the last day of school and I decided to make a giant cupcake for my daughter's teacher. I am one of the room moms and I get to present a gift certificate and card to her teacher.I learned two new methods for this cupcake: mini marshmallow flower petals and basket weave frosting technique. For the mini marshmallow flower petals you snip each mini marshmallow in half and dip the cut sides into colored sugar crystals and arrange around a skittle. The basket weave frosting method is best explained here. The colors of my frosting didn't turn out quite bright enough for me and I wish my basket had a handle, but I ran out of time. Still cute though! 

Barnyard Cupcakes

Aren't these CAH-YOOT? I made them for my son's end of the year preschool program. The horses were the hardest. I originally made 5, but two died of broken necks. The eyes of most of the animals are mini chocolate chips. The ears, combs, tails are mostly made of starbursts or fruit flavored tootsie rolls. The horses necks are made of vanilla creme wafers, the heads are made of circus peanuts, the manes are made of melted chocolate that I drizzled over the head and neck. The horsetails are licorice shoelaces. 

The chicks and chickens are my absolute favorites in the bunch. I dipped the chicks in melted frosting and then yellow candy sprinkles to achieve a fuzzy look. The chicks' beaks and the nostrils of the pigs and horses are candy coated chocolate covered sunflower seeds I bought from Trader Joe's the weekend I was in Boston. The sheep and lamb heads are made from caramels. What a six hour (not counting mixing up batter and baking) decorating blast! When they were all set up at the Preschool all the parents went crazy over them. A lot of them took pictures of my cupcakes. I couldn't be more proud of them if I had actually given birth. What a high!

The horses were really difficult because I had to glue the heads to the necks using melted and dyed almond bark which was not smooth and really hard to use. I probably won't be making those again, but the licorice tails were supercute. I originally made manes and tail from caramels pushed through a garlic press and they looked great for about an hour. Then they kind of slumped together in a gooey mess. I probably won't use caramels again. 

Everything else was constructed using mini cupcakes and mini mini cupcakes and regular size cupcakes glued together with frosting and frozen. The only trouble with this method is that once you take them out, the condensation starts and the colors on the the candy start running into your frosting so by the time I got to preschool today, my white chickens all looked like they had slight head wounds. I wish I had a bigger kitchen and possibly a clean up crew because the mess is the only downside of creating such cupcakey bliss. 

I tried putting legs on my pigs with pretzels coated with white chocolate dyed pink, but they didn't look smooth. Then I tried pink licorice vines and they turned out with the same flying effect as the pretzel legged sheep, so I left the pigs legless. My tails on the pigs were too cute though, thanks to Amy Jo and Mindy for their pig tail advice last night. 

I think I will show off my cupcake making prowess at my mother-daughter book club meetings next. Stay tuned . . .

March of the Penguins

These would have turned out even cuter had I been able to find Famous Chocolate wafers and if I had used mini cupcakes and plain donut holes rather than mini donuts and chocolate covered donut holes for the penguin bodies. My Sunday school class loved them though.

Oh my Cuteness!

Aren't these cupcakes cool? The shark is from Hello, Cupcake! I couldn't find the chocolate cookies they suggested so I used a triangular graham cracker piece, for the eyes: mini chocolate chips, the body is a Twinkie and the mouth is a oval shaped piece of fruit by the foot. I glued the Twinkie to the cupcake with frosting , stuck in the graham cracker and froze until hard. Then I melted vanilla frosting in a measuring cup for 20 seconds in the microwave and stirred in a tiny bit of Wilton black gel food coloring to make pale gray. Then I dipped the whole shark into the melted frosting. When it was a little dry I stuck on the mouth and eyes, drew on the teeth and gills with frosting and then smeared on some blue frosting waves.

The sunflowers are brownie batter baked in foil cupcake liners. I used canned vanilla frosting dyed yellow and squeezed it out of a Ziploc with a corner snipped off. 

The ladybugs were partly frosted and then dipped in red sugar crystals. I used snipped Ziplocs filled with chocolate and vanilla frosting again for the whites of the eyes and the wing divider. I used mini chocolate chips for the eyeballs and spots. 

I had the best time making these cupcakes. Cupcake decorating is my new fetish. I keep finding excuses to make them. The sharks (and penguins I will soon be making) are for my Sunday School class and the Ladybugs and Sunflowers are for a baby sitting co-op lunch today.

Baseball Party

These are some ideas for my nephew's baseball party:

Invitations: cut to look like tickets to a major league game. The invitations can say "Take me out to the Ball Game . . . It's a Baseball Birthday Party for Ollie! Help this slugger celebrate his 5th birthday in true baseball style!" For the ticket seat (row and section), you can put birth date of your child. Or they could look like baseball cards with a picture of Ollie in a baseball uniform and write "All Star," put the picture on the front and the details of the party on the back. Ask the guests to come dressed wearing baseball hats and jerseys.

I think you start out with food that you would typically eat at a baseball game: hot dogs, soda, popcorn, nachos, marshmallow peanuts and cracker jacks. Maybe you should throw in baby carrots and cherry tomatoes as bats and balls. Pretzels, soft or regular. For the drinks maybe lemonade or soda or gatorade. Licorice, Cotton candy, ice cream sundaes.

Cute goodie bags would be those red and white cardboard popcorn containers (dollar store!). Or you could give wiffle balls and bats as party favors.

A fun game would be musical chairs, but using baseball bases that you could make out of white cardboard and you could play the Boys of Summer or Take Me Out to the ball game. You could also play hot potato and use a baseball as the potato. The kids could also hit wiffle balls through a hula hoop.

Another fun game would be a bean bag toss with baseball bean bags into a little baseball diamond you have made with white spray paint on the grass. You could do a baseball on spoon relay using ping pong balls decorated with red pen for seams.

I think a cool cake would be a baseball diamond with little plastic baseball players on it, you could even make it an ice cream cake layered with cake. Or a cupcake cake frosted to look like a giant baseball or a bunch of regular cupcakes frosted as baseballs. Or some vanilla ice cream scooped into round balls, rolled in white chocolate flakes or coconut and then decorated with red licorice shoelaces or red frosting  to make the seams for baseballs.

Decorations: banner made from freezer paper on the front of the house with "Welcome to Ollie Field" Use old baseball trophies, cards, bats, balls and gloves. You could make place mats that look like baseballs or baseball diamonds and laminate them. 

Other Magical Party Stuff

The invitation included this picture of a magician and asked the guests to come dressed as witches, fairies, genies, magicians, wizards or other magical beings and I put a bunch of glitter and sequins in each envelope.

For the games I chose regular old party games and gave them a magical twist:

Simon Says=Genie says (and whoever was the Genie held a blue glass bottle that my daughter broke a week later)

Freeze Dance and pass the parcel to songs with magic themes:

Witchcraft-Frank Sinatra

Somewhere over the Rainbow-Israel Kamakawiwo'

Magic-Olivia Newton John

Bibbi-bobbidi-boo-Fireside singers

Magic Dance-David Bowie (My Favorite!)

Calling All Munchkins-Muppet Wizard of Oz Soundtrack

The Witch is in the House-Muppet Wizard of Oz Soundtrack

I'm Flying-Mary Martin

Mahna Mahna-Muppet Wizard of Oz Soundtrack

Do You Believe in Magic?-The Lovin' Spoonful

Thumballina-Harry Nilsson

Three is a Magic Number-Bob Dorough (School House Rock)

I also had my husband (show name Professor Presto) put on a magic show. The twist there was that he did the tricks and then showed them how to do the trick themselves. I have never seen such an enthusiastic and believing audience! I really regret that I didn't videotape this, it was priceless. One little girl even came up and hugged him after he showed them how to perform the tricks themselves:

Chinese writing

floating scarf

levitating

disappearing penny

unpoppable balloon 

I tried to find them on you tube, but came up with lots of trash instead:(

Later one of the moms of a guest told me that her little girl was doing the disappearing penny and floating scarf trick for weeks after the party.

They also made magic wands using wooden dowels, craft paper shapes, ribbons, glitter, glue and sequins. 

And that was my daughter's magical 7th birthday party. I hope I can maintain the same quality and enthusiasm for my sons' birthday parties in the summer. They both want to do Lego Star Wars Wii and one wants to also include water games and possibly a surfboard cake with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker surfing and battling with light sabers on top. We'll see!

Goodie Cups

I found this idea in Martha Stewart Kids Magazine Spring 2005 issue. I couldn't find them online, I guess there isn't much money to be made in paper cup pails so I took a picture of the magazine page. You can punch holes in colored paper cups and use ribbon or pipe cleaners for the handle. I used black cups and dipped the top edges in Elmer's glue and then glitter. I had also wanted to glue miniature playing cards to the outside of the cups, but couldn't find them anywhere! 

It was actually surprisingly hard to find magical items to put in the goodie cups so I just did my best at the dollar store. I think I figured out that each cup cost me about $1.79 to make including everything. I heart the dollar store. If you are going to waste money on tiny items that will eventually end up in the trash then the dollar store is the perfect place to get them. 

Each cup contained: a balloon, a sparkly pencil, glow-in-the-dark jewelry, dum-dums, pixie sticks, razzles, mini bubbles and a glittery bug. They were really fun to make and fill. I would totally make them again, but choose an easier theme. The dollar store had tons of circus, bugs,princess and ocean critters stuff, but alas no Lego Star Wars Wii items (next two birthday parties I have to plan for).

Magical Foods

I did not have that many magical food items, but I did make pretzel wands and playing card sandwiches which were both huge hits. They had both the cuteness factor and they tasted good. 

The wands were super simple to make. I even let my kids help. To make, melt white chocolate (or if you are trying to save money like I was, white almond bark) in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water. Dip both ends of the large pretzel wands into the melted white chocolate and then place on a piece of wax paper. Sprinkle with candy or sprinkles. I chose Wilton stars to make them extra magical. 

For the playing card sandwiches I bought some loaves of soft white bread and cut all the crusts off. I cut them all in half. I used some miniature cookie cutters I got from Williams-Sonoma to make hearts or spades or clubs in the corner. I did not have a diamond shaped cookie cutter. For the hearts I spread the bottom half of the bread with peanut butter and then spread strawberry jam over the peanut butter and placed the slice with the heart cutouts on top. I did the exact same thing with the spade and club sandwiches, but used Nutella instead of peanut butter and jelly. I think the playing card sandwiches were my favorite food item, they just seemed so Alice in Wonderlandesque to me.  

For the decorations, I just did traditional streamers and balloons in all different colors. I forgot to get a picture of the room when I was done decorating, but it was more colorful than magical. For the table I spread a white table cloth out and placed red napkins down the center like a table runner. Then I sprinkled the entire table with sequins and confetti. I used all my silver and crystal serving pieces so it was extra fancy. 

Magical Princess Hat Cake

I had been wanting to try this wizard hat cake I saw on Nick Jr for the longest time, but decided to do it my own way. It turned out totally cute looking, but I guess kids don't like fondant because most of them scraped it off (except my kids, they love anything sugary). It took me three days to complete (in stages) and was so much fun for me. I wish I could work at Charm City Cakes in Baltimore.

I started out by using a pound cake mix and baking it in a glass two cup measuring bowl, a small glass bowl and some ramekins. I stacked them together and glued them using apricot preserves (heated and strained to get the chunks out). Then I stuck a sugar cone on top for the peak of the hat. 

The fondant started out white and I dyed it with Wilton gel food coloring and rolled it out to cover the whole cake. To make the ribbons, I dyed more fondant, printed it with a cheese grater to make some subtle texture, cut them into strips and curled them around chopsticks or kind of draped them on a cookie sheet until they dried out. I used cookie cutters on some white rolled out fondant to make the veil and then draped it over two rolling pins to harden. I had to attach everything with royal icing which was a royal pain to make because I did not have any egg white powder so I had to pasteurize my own egg whites which is a tricky task.

I learned, the hard way, that fondant has a tendency to sag when other objects such as marzipan bugs and hard fondant ribbons and veil are attached to it. But overall I was pleased with the result. My favorite parts of the cake were my African-American marzipan fairy and my marzipan toadstools and the ribbons and veil.